“You are possessed with a sad infatuation,” he replied persuasively. “You are not the first who has suffered so. It will pass, and leave you sane—leave you to me. For you are mine; what you felt a moment ago you will feel again, when this romantic martyrdom of yours has wearied you.”
“Monsieur Doltaire,” she said, with a successful effort at calmness, though I could see her trembling too, “it is you who are mistaken, and I will show you how. But first: You have said often that I have unusual intelligence. You have flattered me in that, I doubt not, but still here is a chance to prove yourself sincere. I shall pass by every wicked means that you took first to ruin me, to divert me to a dishonest love (though I knew not what you meant at the time), and, failing, to make me your wife. I shall not refer to this base means to reach me in this sacred place, using the King’s commission for such a purpose.”
“I would use it again and do more, for the same ends,” he rejoined, with shameless candour.
She waved her hand impatiently. “I pass all that by. You shall listen to me as I have listened to you, remembering that what I say is honest, if it has not your grace and eloquence. You say that I will yet come to you, that I care for you and have cared for you always, and that—that this other—is a sad infatuation. Monsieur, in part you are right.”
He came another step forward, for he thought he saw a foothold again; but she drew back to the chair, and said, lifting her hand against him, “No, no, wait till I have done. I say that you are right in part. I will not deny that, against my will, you have always influenced me; that, try as I would, your presence moved me, and I could never put you out of my mind, out of my life. At first I did not understand it, for I knew how bad you were. I was sure you did evil because you loved it; that to gratify yourself you would spare no one: a man without pity—”
“On the contrary,” he interrupted, with a sour sort of smile, “pity is almost a foible with me.”
“Not real pity,” she answered. “Monsieur, I have lived long enough to know what pity moves you. It is the moment’s careless whim; a pensive pleasure, a dramatic tenderness. Wholesome pity would make you hesitate to harm others. You have no principles—”
“Pardon me, many,” he urged politely, as he eyed her with admiration.
“Ah no, monsieur; habits, not principles. Your life has been one long irresponsibility. In the very maturity of your powers, you use them to win to yourself, to your empty heart, a girl who has tried to live according to the teachings of her soul and conscience. Were there not women elsewhere to whom it didn’t matter—your abandoned purposes? Why did you throw your shadow on my path? You are not, never were, worthy of a good woman’s love.”
He laughed with a sort of bitterness. “Your sinner stands between two fires—” he said. She looked at him inquiringly, and he added, “the punishment he deserves and the punishment he does not deserve. But it is interesting to be thus picked out upon the stone, however harsh the picture. You said I influenced you—well?”